Posted by I AGREE
a resident of Another Pleasanton neighborhood
on Feb 3, 2012 at 10:02 am

Pleasanton DOES have a bigger teen drug problem than you think! WAKE UP Pleasanton, it can happen in any community no matter the economic level. Thank you to our schools and police department for taking on this urgent issue. My kids graduated from Pleasanton schools not that long ago and I would have welcomed the drug sniffing dogs when they were in school.

Posted by Ridiculous
a resident of Another Pleasanton neighborhood
on Feb 3, 2012 at 10:22 am

Having Pleasanton police officers roaming school parking lots with dogs takes police officers off the streets of Pleasanton. These Pleasanton police officers should be patrolling the streets of Pleasanton, keeping our neighborhoods and parks safe, keeping senior citizens and shoppers safe by patrolling our business districts and shopping malls, and responding to emergency calls from our residents, not walking their dogs on Pleasanton school campuses.

If the school board thinks they is a huge drug trafficking problem on campus, they should PAY the full value of salaries and benefits to the city for 3 extra police officers to be hired. These 3 officers should be put them in the schools (Amador, Foothill and Village) as undercover 'students' to pose as real students in order to track down the big time drug pushers the school board obviously believes have invaded the school system.

Is the $500,000 per year for the school board too much spend or two little to spend because there is a MAJOR drug problem?

That is up to them.

However, I am appalled the school district mooching off the city's budget like leeches and diverting public safety officers from the streets who should be patrolling the streets of Pleasanton.

Posted by notRidiculous
a resident of Downtown
on Feb 3, 2012 at 12:07 pm

Mr. Ridiculous,

The kids in school who do drugs are also part of the city. Whatever they do is not confined to the walls of the schools. It does spill into the city streets too. Schools are part of the city and gives character too.

I just have a hard time believing that this police dog approach is going to be effective. It sounds like a high visibility, feel-good, effort which just randomly targets everyone at school instead of focussing attention on the small percentage of students who are probably at the heart of the problem.

Posted by Ridiculous
a resident of Another Pleasanton neighborhood
on Feb 3, 2012 at 1:06 pm

Sam, I agree. Even when some student is singled out and the 'search' turns out nothing, the student will have to go through the humiliation of being called out of class by the fuzz and questioned by the SS, um I mean, PUSD interrogation team. Have you heard about these? A preview -

"Billy, I know you have something important to share with us. The canines picked up a sniff about SOMETHING. Tell us. What friends were with you the other night? Who was in your car? Billy, talk to us. We'll go easy on you if you just open up to us."

And then there is the "Enemies List." Use the YAHOO search engine and type in the 3 words "CUSD Enemies List" and you'll see the school district maintained an enemies list containing entire family trees of families and children and relatives of petition circulators, community activists and municipal elected and appointed officials throughout the entire county.

Posted by Heroin, Really?
a resident of Walnut Grove Elementary School
on Feb 3, 2012 at 4:02 pm

Mooseturd (love the name) above mentioned that he witnessed a young man shooting heroin in his arm. My Pleasanton hairdresser told me that in the 6 weeks since I've seen her 2 different clients came in saying they have found out their teens were using heroin.
THIS IS the noise and chatter that we should all be paying attention to. If we don't talk, look, sniff and listen how are we going to know what's going on.

Posted by Ridiculous
a resident of Another Pleasanton neighborhood
on Feb 3, 2012 at 4:38 pm

Obviously, the school district's superintendent and President (is that Laursen?) or their highly paid but dubious legal eagles either have not read the Attorney General of California's opinion saying it is already unconstitutional or have read it and choose to ignore it. Or perhaps the drug dogs should head to the School Board office because maybe they can in fact read there, but cannot interpret what they read:

"We are asked whether a school’s random investigation of drugs contained in pupils’ personal belongings, using dogs to sniff the belongings outside of the pupils’presence, followed by a search of any belongings to which the dogs reacted, would be permissible under the Fourth Amendment of the federal Constitution and the privacy guarantee of the California Constitution. We conclude that the proposed random detection program would not survive constitutional scrutiny."

Posted by Pete
a resident of Another Pleasanton neighborhood
on Feb 3, 2012 at 6:40 pm

What's the Rush? "A Child's Right to Learn" There are 18 other hours in the day to experiment with drugs. Actually... What's the Rush? "A Child's Right to Learn" would provide a wonderful title to the new written policy, IMO. Thank you, Pleasanton Weekly!

Posted by Ridiculous
a resident of Another Pleasanton neighborhood
on Feb 3, 2012 at 10:21 pm

Actually a new policy could be: "A Child's Right to Learn in an Environment Where the Superintendent and Board Members Actually Know What They Are Doing." Maybe we could send the six to reading specialists.

DOG DRUG SNIFFS TO STOP STATE RULING HALTS MOJAVE SCHOOLS PRACTICE.

Byline: Karen Maeshiro Staff Writer

MOJAVE - The Mojave Unified School District will halt random checks of students' backpacks using drug-sniffing dogs after a state Attorney General's Office opinion said such searches are unconstitutional.

The Attorney General's Office said making students leave their backpacks so a dog can sniff them conflicts with the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment, which bars unreasonable searches and seizures, and the the privacy guarantee of the California Constitution.

``We conclude that the proposed random detection program would not survive constitutional scrutiny,'' stated the opinion, issued in November.

Posted by Matt
a resident of Another Pleasanton neighborhood
on Feb 4, 2012 at 4:08 pm

Most poorly thought out editorial you have ever written. All schools have some kids selling and using drugs. This action helps safeguard our kids and our community. Any parent who wouldn't move to a school district with this program is clueless. This is a good school system and this program will make it even better. Reasonable people will conclude there is no downside.

Posted by Ridiculous
a resident of Another Pleasanton neighborhood
on Feb 4, 2012 at 6:57 pm

This does no safeguarding of anyone, but basically ensures employment of multiple legal firms for the next few years on lawsuits.

Furthermore, given that most of the general Pleasanton population, all ages, all races, at all times of day, has been at one time or another pulled over for a traffic stop by the Pleasanton police for no particular reason, then asked very silly questions about where you had been, where were you going, what your job is, why are you out so late, you were just in a store-what is in your shopping bag, etc., this means that the Pleasanton police routinely pulls over people with no actual traffic violation or probable cause.

How many stories of people being stopped with various excuses like 'you used your turn signal too late,' 'you forgot to use your turn signal,' or 'you tail-light seems to not be working' do you have to hear in this community before you start to really question what is exactly going on?

If too many police officers have been hired in this community and the low level of actual crimes does not support the huge police payroll, then the mayor and city council should immediately lay off some police officers. But don't send them to our schools as a way to bide their time and come up with more supposed 'juvenile' crimes by having them target the teen and tween crowds.